30,000 artists' digitized works will be sent to the moon via Lunar Codex

Credits: Lunar Codex

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The moon after being the most obvious destination for space exploration will now be a repository of human creativity. A project called the Lunar Codex is sending thousands of artworks, poems, films, songs, and other expressions of culture to the lunar surface, where they will be preserved for future generations.

The Lunar Codex is a global initiative led by Samuel Peralta, a Canadian physicist and art collector. He says the project is a way of celebrating the diversity and resilience of humanity in the face of challenges such as war, pandemics, and economic crises.

As The Guardian reported on Tuesday, the project has collected works from 30,000 artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians from 157 countries. The works range from a Lego portrait to a collection of soil prints from Ukraine to a poetry anthology from every continent. The works are being digitized and stored on memory cards or laser-etched on NanoFiche, a modern version of microfiche.

The works are divided into four capsules, each with a different destination on the moon. The first capsule called the Orion collection, has already orbited the moon on Nasa’s Artemis 1 mission last year. The other capsules will be delivered by lunar landers to various craters and plains on the moon in the coming months via the Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) partners, such as Astrobotic Technologies and NASA CLPS-2 Mission Corp.

The Lunar Codex is not the first artistic project to reach the moon. In 1969, the Apollo 12 mission carried a ceramic tile with drawings by Andy Warhol and other artists. In 1971, the Apollo 15 crew left a small aluminum sculpture by Paul van Hoeydonck on the surface.

However, the Lunar Codex is more diverse and inclusive than previous projects. It features works by emerging and established artists from different backgrounds and disciplines. Some examples are Ayana Ross’s New American Gothic, which won the 2021 Bennett Prize for female artists; Oleysa Dzhurayeva’s woodcuts and linocuts, which she made after fleeing from Kyiv during the Russian invasion; and Connie Karleta Sales’s paintings, which reflect her experience of living with an autoimmune disease that affects her vision.

The Lunar Codex has four collections of content, each associated with a different mission.

The Orion Collection which has already orbited the moon included a flash drive with poems and other content that will be archived on the moon in a later mission. The Peregrine Collection is the second collection, and it will go on Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission, which will land on the moon in 2024. This mission will deliver several payloads to a site near the Ocean of Storms, where they will explore the lunar terrain and conduct scientific experiments.

The #LunarCodex isn't on all CLPS missions - only three of them so far. The Codex was also on an Artemis mission (Artemis I/Orion). We're in discussions for one more CLPS mission, and one with an Asian space organization - may not happen but onward! https://t.co/g0oix0XX1G pic.twitter.com/qlHgcyEpob

The Nova Collection is the third one. It will go on NASA’s CLPS-2 mission, which will land on the moon in 2025. This mission will send a rover to the south pole of the moon, where it will look for water ice, and other resources. The Polaris Collection is the fourth collection, and it will go on Astrobotic’s Griffin/NASA VIPER mission, which will land on the moon in 2026. This mission will send a rover to a crater near the south pole of the moon.

As per its official website, the Lunar Codex employs a combination of analog and digital technologies to safeguard a wide array of cultural treasures such as art, books, music, and more. The choice of technology depends on the specific mission's objectives and requirements.

Analog Technology

The Lunar Codex predominantly employs NanoFiche, an analog technology, for preserving content in projects like NASA CLPS-2 Mission 1 (IM1) and Griffin Mission 1 (GM1). NanoFiche is highly efficient, storing significantly more content than microfiche within the same space. Notably, it remains unaffected by temperature and humidity and boasts minimal degradation.

NanoFiche serves as an archival medium with an exceptional lifespan, projected to endure for hundreds of thousands of years. This has earned it the reputation as a prime candidate for creating "million-year archives." In IM1, Lunar Codex employs nickel NanoFiche discs the size of dimes, containing multicolor images with impressive resolution.

The #LunarCodex - and other Nanofiche-based payloads for @Int_Machines' IM-1 mission to the Moon in June/July 2023 - has been delivered and is now being integrated with the Nova-C lunar lander.The #LunarCodex includes work from 156 countries around the globe. Excelsior! pic.twitter.com/Up6QVWJOiL

Different types of content are stored in varying formats. Art is preserved as RGB files, text as single-channel images, and music in waveform and spectral decomposition formats. NanoFiche technology enables high-resolution images to be miniaturized to exhibit a catalog reduced to credit-card sizes using gold-based microfiche technology.

While gold-based technology, despite its compactness, is unsuitable for lunar missions due to weight constraints, nickel-based NanoFiche technology provides higher resolution over a smaller area. The Lunar Codex uses this nickel-based NanoFiche technology, known as Totenpass, in its Nova and Polaris time capsules.

Digital Technology

Digital technology is predominantly used for the Peregrine Mission One (PM1) payload. This involves machine-readable and writable files stored on non-volatile memory cards. Digital technology excels in data storage capacity and weight efficiency.

Credits: Lunar Codex

A MoonBox capsule houses the Lunar Codex payload, consisting of both analog and digital elements. These capsules are consolidated into a DHL MoonBox canister, which is secured to the Peregrine Lander's structure, serving as a marker upon landing.

Stacked Analog-Digital Technology

Griffin Mission 1 (GM1), responsible for transporting the Lunar Codex's third-time capsule, Polaris, employs an innovative stacked storage approach. This configuration involves the strategic placement of alternating layers, including nickel shielding, NanoFiche memory discs, and digital memory cards. This arrangement is designed to enhance storage capacity and ensure the enduring preservation of archival content.

Incorporating digital, analog, and hybrid elements, these time capsules will once again be securely enclosed within a single MoonBox canister, sealed for protection, and affixed to the lunar lander's structure. As a result, the Griffin lander takes on a dual role – not only as a conveyance for these specialized time capsules but also as a permanent marker that designates the location of the Polaris collection within the esteemed Lunar Codex project.